To Solidous,

All in all, not horrible ideas. I do like the Quick Cast suggestion above all, and the trade off of extended duration of Last Resort at the cost of 2% delay reduction per Desperate Blows merit.

A few concerns and suggestions, though. Your idea for Dark Eternal, while good in THEORY, just won't last long enough to be worthwhile. Your average player MIGHT get 4-5 swings in 30 seconds, and DRK just doesn't hold enmity as well as the more dedicated DD jobs in the game, rendering the spikes effect negligible at best. If a DRK and a MNK, both equally geared and skilled, were in the same party, odds are that the MNK would be tanking unless he's taking it easy. This sounds more like an "Oh sh*t" desperation job ability rather than anything effectively useful in a normal basis.

Imbibe would be awesome, however a 1 in 20 shot of absorbing a status effect seems to me to STILL be rather high. maybe a 1-2% chance native, with slight increases available with gear. Also, there should be a caveat to avoid it being abused: Only effective with a two-handed weapon, or chance of occurring limited to the first attack in a round.

Clarification needed on your suggestion for Truculence. Is that 5 TP per tick at a cost of 30HP TOTAL, or 30HP per TICK? I suggest the latter.

Dark Mirror and Riposte also sound good in theory, but are too easily manipulated. Most mobs are rather predictable, and in such, this ability would make reversing damage from catastrophic hits easily exploitable. For example: Throat Stab. Deals 95% damage to the recipient, yet takes forever to ready. A well geared DRK can easily have huge amounts of HP, making 1600+ outside of abyssea and 3000+ inside abyssea damages not unheard of from that move. A caveat to that one, to make it not overpowered would be something along the lines of "Normal physical damage directed at the Dark Knight will be recorded etc..."

Not bad though, well thought out ideas.